


i got my heart tied up

by iangaellagher



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bipolar Disorder, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 09:06:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3244034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iangaellagher/pseuds/iangaellagher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian says "we" like Mandy's part of his plan, his future, like he wants her there.</p><p>(<a href="https://ficbook.net/readfic/5096769">Русский</a> translation available)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i got my heart tied up

**Author's Note:**

> title from "corinne" by metronomy
> 
> i'm not in denial about 5x03 so much as i am pissed about it so here's an au where everyone is more or less okay, or is at least trying to get there. i wrote this a few months after season 4 ended so it ignores most of season 5.
> 
> this fic has been translated (!!!) into [Русский](https://ficbook.net/readfic/5096769) (thank you so much to SleepingThroughReality)

"Aren't you supposed to be running with him?" Mandy asks.

Mickey jumps beside her, was probably too busy staring at Ian's ass to realize she's been sitting right next to him for at least fifteen minutes. He gives her a quick glance and then lifts up his cigarette. "Smoke break."

"Smoke break while running?" Mandy snorts. "Sounds like an oxymoron."

"Oxy-what?"

Right. She forgot her brother didn't pass, like, the fucking fourth grade. She shakes her head. "Whatever."

Mickey shrugs and resumes watching Ian run laps around the track, taking a slow drag of his cigarette. They sit silently for a few minutes, Mandy fiddling with the hem of her skirt and chipping off the already-chipped blue nail polish on her thumb while Mickey does whatever Mickey does. Makes heart eyes at his boyfriend, probably. Mandy would roll her eyes at the whole thing if it didn't kind of warm her heart a little bit.

But just a little. Because her brother boning her best friend is still a bit of a sore spot. 

Mandy moves on from chipping her nail polish to biting her cuticles. Her eyes follow Ian around the track, his gray tank top soaked in sweat and his orange hair a deep shade of red where it's plastered to his forehead. He looks like he just jumped off the pages of a fitness magazine. He's gotten tan lately, too, the green tint gone from his skin, and his freckles stand out more. She's always liked his freckles.

"Mick, come on!" Ian calls out, not even out of breath after the ten laps he just ran in straight succession.

Mickey pretends to look torn between finishing his smoke and exercising voluntarily, so Mandy makes the decision for him by swiping his cigarette. She smirks at him and motions for him to go join his fucking boyfriend.

"Douchebag," Mickey mutters, but he stands and makes his way down the bleachers to Ian.

He's barely on the track before Ian wraps his humongous body around him, and Mandy lets herself feel jealous for only a second before smiling--she's trying to be a better person and all that. Mickey doesn't even hesitate before he hugs Ian back, which Mandy will tease him about later. For now, she brings the cigarette to her lips and watches in amusement as Ian kisses Mickey's jaw and then starts a new lap. Mickey stares after him dazedly for a moment before following.

It's dumb, really, but she blamed Ian for a long time for her baggage. For not loving her back the way she wanted him to, for making her fuck Lip and fall in love with him as well. It still stings, may never stop, but at least Ian loves Mickey. Mandy hates her brother a lot sometimes because he's a huge asshole and an ever bigger dumbass, but Mickey loves Ian too, and they both deserve that.

She still thinks they're stupid, though. Or maybe they're brave. It's hard to tell which is which these days.

\--

It's two a.m. and Mandy can't sleep, just keeps tossing around in bed and rearranging her sheets and fluffing her pillows, but the flashing numbers on the clock continue to move forward. It's a restlessness she hasn't felt in a while. She used to get like this a lot when she was little, back when she fell asleep and woke up to the steady rhythm of her parents throwing shit at each other. They were always so wasted that their words slurred and she could never make out the argument. She thinks it was something generic, though, like who snorted the last of the coke or who fucked the other's siblings.

She makes an executive decision to get out of bed, maybe smoke a cigarette to calm her down, or drink some tequila because that shit knocks her out like a light. She doesn't make it to the kitchen, though, or even past the hallway, because she sees a shock of red through the crack in the bathroom door and her heart starts pounding violently against her ribcage.

"Ian--" she says, shoving the door open.

"Shut the fuck up," someone hisses, and she turns her head to see Mickey on the floor leaning back against the tub. He pointedly looks down at Ian's sleeping body, his head resting in Mickey's lap.

Her eyes flicker from Mickey's frustrated face to Ian's sleeping form. He has dark circles under his eyes and his whole body just looks smaller, like it's caving in on itself. She can't help but think about the boy who held her hand in school hallways and lost miserably to her at video games and smiled at her with all his teeth. She can't fucking connect that boy back to this one.

"Oh," she whispers. "Shit. Sorry."

She's about to close the door and continue her search for liquor, but her hand freezes on the doorknob. A few wordless moments pass between her and Mickey, and then she sits down against the wall across from them, hugging her knees to her chest.

She suddenly feels like she's ten again and trying to muffle her sobs so her brothers won't call her a pussy. But she's hardened since then, doesn't cry as easy.

"Is he okay?" she asks, keeping her voice hushed like the topic is sacred. It is, though. He is.

Mickey runs his thumb along the side of Ian's face and sighs. "I don't know."

"Is it the meds?"

"Yeah."

Mandy nods slowly like she understands, but, honestly, she doesn't understand much. She has some vague memories of Ian talking about his mom once or twice, about how she would leave and come back depending on whether she was taking her pills or not. She usually didn't take them, so she usually wasn't around. But Ian never really liked to talk about her more than the occasional slip up when he must've not been able to hold back. Mandy got it, sort of. She never talked about Mom unless the words were trying to claw their way out of her throat.

Ian takes his pills, though. Always on the dot. They make him so sick that he can barely eat most days, is so tired during others that getting out of bed isn't an option. He takes them anyway, no complaints, and that part she gets. Breaking the pattern. 'Cause no one wants to be a fuck up like their parents.

She's not sure why she does it, but something in Mickey's eyes pushes her to say, "He's getting better."

Mickey looks up at her, sighs again, and begins carding his fingers through Ian's hair.

"Maybe he should…" she begins, but then lets the sentence trail off as the corners of Mickey's mouth turn down. He knows what she's gonna say because she's said it before and he didn't like it then and he'll probably like it even less now. But this isn't about Mickey.

"We just need to--"

"Mick, we can't," she interrupts. "We don't know anything about this. You think Googling it at the library made us experts or something? They know what to do."

Mickey's gaze hardens. "He's got pills, okay? And he's--he's getting better. We can make it work."

Mandy looks down at her toes, painted dark purple but looking more like fresh bruises. It's a bruise, this thing, just a bruise. It's gotta heal. But it can't heal here. Nothing ever heals in the Milkovich house.

"He needs to be with family," she says, voice barely above a whisper.

Mickey's face turns an angry shade of red. "He is fam--"

"No, like, his actual family. We're--" Replacements, probably. Surrogates. Ian's as lost as the rest of the Gallaghers, more so now that this has all started, but he's gonna wake up one day and get it. Not that she and Mickey are bad people--she knows he loves Mickey, maybe loves her, but loving someone and really being with them are two different things. Mandy and Mickey aren't what he really needs twenty-fours hours a day, seven days a week. He's already fucked up enough without their own bullshit fucking him up more.

Lip figured it out soon enough. Ian's not any dumber, he's just a step behind.

\--

When Ian had still spent days curled up on the far side of Mickey's bed, as if he'd been trying to distance himself from the room and the world, Mandy had felt guilty for…for everything.

She hadn't meant to do it, was trying to give Ian his space, but it was one in the afternoon and the house was dead silent and her face was hurting from a recent punch and she needed Ian. Missed him and needed him and wished she didn't all the same.

He was silent when she said his name, silent as she slowly opened the door, silent as she crept under the blankets with him and curled up behind his back, leaving the barest sliver of space between them. His ribs expanded and contracted evenly so he must've been sleeping. It was almost comforting to know that he could have a break, at least for a little while. Ian deserved that. Ian deserved everything.

"Hey," she whispered, fingers tracing his shoulder blade. She held her breath for a moment, hoping he'd respond, but he just continued breathing.

Before she could even realize what was happening, she was crying, sobs wracking her body while one hand clutched Ian's shoulder and the other covered her mouth as she tried to stifle the noise. Her vision blurred but she kept her eyes open and trained on Ian's back, on her hand holding onto him like an anchor and the way light from the window made his skin glow. Fuck, he shouldn't have been there, like that, stuck in a bed and inside his head and all alone, god, Ian must always be alone, how hadn't she noticed that before?

"I'm sorry," she tried to say, "I'm fucking sorry," but the words left her mouth as muffled cries and she couldn't stop being a train wreck for one fucking second to tell Ian that she loved him and that it was her fault. That she should've done something.

She hadn't known that he was serious, hadn't really believed that he'd go through with it. Not because she thought he was gonna pussy out, but because she thought he was gonna come to his senses and come home. She was so angry at Mickey for not saying anything when she hadn't even been able to get the words out herself. "Stay," like it was so fucking hard, like she didn't know Ian needed someone to put their heart on their sleeve for him. Maybe it wouldn't have helped, but Ian couldn't get himself blown up at seventeen and--fuck, she shouldn't have let him try.

All those weeks she knew where he was and they kept up a steady stream of texts that got vaguer and vaguer by the day--all that time and she hadn't said a fucking word. Just watched as Mickey became a certified alcoholic and pretended like nothing mattered while she hurt over Lip fucking Gallagher. 'Cause for some reason she couldn't even think of right then, Lip took precedent over her best friend. She gets it now, though: Lip loved her the way she was still angry at Ian for not being able to.

The tears ebbed away after what felt like hours, until all that was left behind were streaks of mascara running down her face. She took her hand off Ian and looked at the crescent moon indents her nails had left behind, touched them lightly with her index finger as if trying to smooth the marks away.

"I should've done something," she admitted into the silence, the first time she had ever said it out loud. She let the words sink in, let them curl around her lungs and her gut and her heart and squeeze relentlessly, till she felt like she was being crushed from the inside out. But she deserved it, still thinks she deserves worse, because she let him down.

Sometimes she feels like she's only made up of dried blood and bruises.

\--

She's sewing up a hole in her work uniform when a book drops on the kitchen table in front of her. She looks at the title, then at Ian's eager smile as he stands over her, and it takes everything in her not to laugh in his face.

"The fuck is this?" she says.

Ian's smile doesn't falter as he takes the seat to her left. "There are some classes starting soon and I was gonna go sign up. You should do it with me."

"Get my fucking GED?" she asks incredulously. "Yeah, no thanks."

"Why the fuck not?"

"Because it's fucking dumb?"

Ian sighs and leans back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest and leveling her with a look. She can't explain that look, just knows it makes her feel scrutinized and put under a microscope, but also like someone gives a shit.

It's an expression he hasn't given her in a long time. For a while his eyes always seemed glassy, and his lips were always twisted into a shaky smile that Mandy knew he wore to prove everything was fine. It wasn't, and everyone knew, could see it in the way his eyes shifted from sight to sight and his body never stayed still. Everything was constant motion.

But here's the look again. Mandy used to smack his arm when he gave it to her before, but she's so goddamn relieved to see it now. She releases a breath like she'd been holding one in this whole time, just waiting for Ian to come back.

"I mean, I fucked up, Mandy, but you didn't have to--" Ian starts, bringing her out of her thoughts. She cuts him off with a shake of her head.

"I chose to leave," she tells him. "Needed the money." She shrugs and focuses on threading the needle through the torn fabric. "I probably wouldn't have been able to graduate anyway."

"Me neither," Ian says a little sadly. "I was spectacularly failing pre-calc and physics."

Mandy laughs. "I was failing everything."

"Yeah, but not because you're dumb," Ian says, sounding so goddamn sure of himself. "You just never went to class. All we gotta do is take a few prep courses and pass the test, and then we can register for some classes over at Malcolm X."

Her heart gets caught in her throat and she ends up so distracted that she pokes herself with the needle. It draws a drop of blood at the tip of her finger that she sucks into her mouth, using it as an excuse not to reply.

Honestly, though, she doesn't even know where to begin.

Ian says "we" like Mandy's part of his plan, his future, like he wants her there. She knows he wants Mickey to be there in ten years because they're, like, in deep, weird love, but it's hard to imagine that he wants her there, too. Mandy doesn't know where she's gonna be in ten years, doesn't know where she's gonna be tomorrow. Probably gonna go to work and finish off a pack of smokes and maybe buy some cheap wine at the corner store that she'll get drunk on. It's the most detailed plan she's got.

But Ian says "we" and Mandy's heart expands to the size of a nebula.

She doesn't say anything, but she does pull the book a little closer and Ian smiles at her like it's the best fucking thing he's seen all day. Yeah, she can't blame Mickey for falling in love with him.

\--

Mickey comes home from work just as Mandy's pulling off her ugly blue tights and chugging a can of beer. He tosses his coat on the couch and kicks his shoes off in the general direction of the closet. Mandy tracks the movement of the shoes until they hit the floor, right at the edge of the gun cabinet. 

The cabinet is closed, but she knows that inside there are quasi-neat rows of hand guns, followed by semi-automatics, followed by the AK-47s, and so on. In the corner, though, there are the knives: large, sharp hunting knives grouped together with the dull butter knives Mickey collected from the kitchen. "Baby-proofing," he explained as she watched him pull a gun out of the front of his jeans and close the cabinet doors behind it with a sense of finality.

In her own selfish way, Mandy's grateful. For the first time in forever she doesn't have to clear away murder weapons if she wants to use a hard surface. 

But it doesn't stop it from hurting when Ian asks why he can't find a knife to use for his meal and Mickey guiltily stares down at his hands and shrugs.

"Late start," Mickey notes, nodding at the beer in her hand.

Mandy looks away from the cabinet and focuses on Mickey's amused expression. She flips him off. "Yeah, well, having a job fucks up my alcohol schedule. We can't all work around free booze."

Mickey smirks and disappears into the kitchen. He comes back into the living room with a beer and a bag of chips and tosses himself on the couch next to her.

He steals the remote right out of her hands like the asshole he is and earns himself a punch to the arm, but he turns on his stupid wrestling shit anyway. Mandy doesn't actually mind considering she usually channel surfs for an hour and then ends up going to sleep, but it's the fucking principle of the thing.

"Is this what you and Ian are into?" she asks as one of the guys straddles the other's face and thrusts his dick into it.

"Shut up, shithead," Mickey says around a mouthful of chips. "Dudes sticking their dicks in someone's face sounds more like your Friday night."

Mandy bites her lip until she draws blood, and then she downs the rest of her beer and kicks Mickey right in the ribs. "What the fuck?" he yells, but she does it again and again until she's sure she'll leave bruises. Popping blood vessels and breaking bones comes naturally to her.

"Seriously, fucking stop," Mickey says. He wraps his hand around one of her ankles and keeps her leg still while trapping the other one between his back and the couch. She struggles against him for a moment, pissed and angry and two beers away from being drunk enough to deal with this.

"You don't know shit," she spits angrily.

"About what?" he asks, voice filled with confusion.

Mandy glares at him. "About me." She tries to kick him again but he tightens his grip until she lets out a low whine and relents. He tosses her foot away from himself and she rubs her ankle, resolutely not meeting his eye.

The tension hanging in the air is almost suffocating. Mandy hates moments like these. She usually caves immediately, but this time she isn't the one to break the silence.

"Did something happen?" Mickey asks hesitantly, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.

"I'm not a skank," she says. Her voice sounds low and dangerous even to her own ears.

Mickey flicks his eyes over her face, searching for something she's not sure she can give him.

"Okay," he says, no questions asked, and turns back to the TV.

She stares at the screen with unseeing eyes, all the images blurring together into a blue glow. She doesn't realize she's crying until she goes to rub her eyes and her fingers come away black with smudged mascara.

She's starting to realize that the shit never leaves anyone's lives. It hides under their fingernails and in the lines of their faces, clings to them no matter how much they cover it up. Mandy can try to scrub it off all she wants, but there are people who call her "Skankovich" behind her back and a medical record tallying up all her abortions and a chick who's brain-dead because of her. Those kind of stains don't wash out.

\--

Ian might be able to shoot a real gun, but when it comes to video games everything turns to shit. He resorts to underhanded tactics, trying to shove Mandy to make her lose aim of her onscreen gun, but Mandy's had years of practice with her brothers to be able to withstand that shit. She shoves right back twice as hard and shoots Ian's character three times through the chest.

"What the fuck," he says, sounding like all his hopes and dreams have just vanished.

"Maybe one of these days you'll actually beat me," she says, shooting him a smug grin. "But not today, bitch."

Ian laughs and shoves her again.

Mandy bites her lip and looks at Ian out of the corner of her eye. He notices and gives her a glowing smile. She's taken aback by how much that smile reminds her of lazy summer days and getting high in the school bathroom and just every happy memory wrapped into one. Ian hasn't smiled at her that way in a while.

She can't help but wonder if he's pretending--simply waiting for her to turn away so he can drop the act.

Mandy tries to fight off the thought, but she continues to glance at Ian every so often from the corner of her eye. Just to make sure.

She's getting ready for the next round, piloting her character around the crumbling building, when there's a knock on the door. She groans and pauses the game, then makes her way to open it.

She's not prepared for the way her heart leaps into her throat, or the prickles of sweat on the back of her neck, or that dumb look she must have on her face that always gives her away. Lip can read her like an open book even when she tries her hardest to put on a straight face. It's how he fucked her up so well.

He clears his throat. "Hi," he says.

She doesn't respond. Can't. Her tongue feels like lead.

They keep looking at each other even though she feels wrong about it, doesn't really wanna meet his gaze anymore. It's like a copy of an emotion--a crumpled, torn copy that's been run through a shredder.

She can't tell if she's flooded with sadness or relief.

Lip breaks the silence first. "Okay, um, I'm looking for Ian."

"Oh," Mandy says. Except that's not what she wants to say at all. She swallows thickly. God, she's so stupid, how can Lip make her this stupid?

"It's just that I haven't seen him for a while, with college and stuff, you know. Figured I should. So we could…" He trails off, runs a hand through his hair. He looks like saying every word is the equivalent of getting shivved. "Catch up," he finishes.

She looks down and nods. Yeah, 'course he's not here for her. There's no reason to feel so goddamn disappointed.

"Ian," she calls out, voice sounding small, almost as small as she feels.

"Hi," Ian says, the sound extremely close to her ear. She jumps slightly and cranes her neck to look at him. He's not looking at her, though, but straight at Lip, millions of fragmented emotions clouding his eyes.

"Hey," Lip replies.

Mandy glances between them for a few more seconds and swallows past the lump in her throat. She suddenly feels like a roadblock standing in the cramped space of the doorway. She misses this trio of her, Lip, and Ian, but they don't fit anymore. They either pair off or fade away.

She steps around Ian without a word and sits cross-legged on the couch. The door closes quietly, and all she can hear after that are muffled voices that sometimes turn into shouts. She can barely hear a word of it, just knows that the two names that come up a lot are "Milkovich" and "Monica."

It's like some kind of weird ritual that seems fucking unnecessary to her. They'll be fine, Lip and Ian, they'll always be fine. They've got some kind of unspoken agreement that if shit goes down they'll always wade through it to get back to each other. That's just how the Gallaghers function.

She doesn't realize she's chewed off too much of her nail until she tastes blood.

The door opens a little while later and footsteps pad over to the couch. Ian settles in next to her, his warm body pressing against her side.

"Are you--" she starts, but Ian cuts her off with a nod.

"It's all good," he says. Then he gives a short laugh and shakes his head. "Well, no, it's not, but--you know."

"Yeah."

They sit in silence for a few more moments until she can't take it anymore. Fuck Mickey, she's gotta say it, she's gotta tell Ian that playing house with Milkovichs is a mistake. He can build up some kind of fantasy world with Mickey all he wants where the two of them fuck a lot and eat breakfast together and watch movies at night, but it's just gonna hurt a hell of a lot worse when he has to face reality again. She knows that firsthand.

"You should go home," Mandy tells him, words leaving her like a breath.

"What, you don't want me here?" Ian jokes. Mandy doesn't even crack a smile. 

"You know what I mean."

Ian's smile slides off his face, his lips going thin and his forehead crinkling. "I go home all the time. I just…no one's ever really home, you know. Everyone has their own shit going on and it's kind of quiet." He shrugs, says, "Just like it better here, I guess," like it's the simplest statement in the world.

Mandy chokes down the words, screams them inside her head instead because she will never be able to scream them at Ian. She loves him, she does, but who in their right fucking mind would choose her sad excuse for a house over a home? The Gallaghers are an after school special personified, her wet dream. If she's being really, really honest, then probably half the reason she was with Lip was because she wanted to be with him there--with the Gallaghers, in a house that doubled as a home instead of four walls to give you a place to sleep at night.

She knew it would end for her one day. But it doesn't have to end for Ian.

He looks at her expectantly, like he's prepping himself for the argument to come. She can't dish it out, though. Not when he's so close to her here and she's feeling so greedy.

"Okay," she says. And then she falls into him, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face in his shoulder.

Ian can stay as long as he wants. He can stay forever, really. But when he ultimately leaves, he better take her with him.


End file.
